Clapped In Irons
by impossigirl
Summary: Missy finds a way into Gallifrey, pulling herself and the Doctor into dangerous territory.
1. Chapter 1

The dizziness and dismay came in waves as the Doctor's stomach wrings itself with nerves. The stinging in his flushed cheeks reminds him of the hot flicker of sparks that licked his face. He can recall the deep red that blurred his vision. But not the pain, nor the violence inflicted on the only thing of value, the only thing that was still tangible from his damned planet. The usual clicks and hums of the TARDIS were stripped from his mind and the smoke from the console wraps around his wrists. He realizes his transgressions.

The Doctor leans forward after a few moments, letting his reluctant tears finally spill over. He flexes his knuckles over the console as reality sets in. Bloodied fingers slide on the console buttons, quick to delete any trace's of Missy's deception. Of Gallifreyan coordinates.

_You win _

He should take umbrage at the type of thoughts that swirl in his mind, but he lets them play out with a twinge of pleasure. The trigger pulled, the button pressed. In that fleeting moment, he would have killed the Master.

As fate would have it, his time for reflection and self-chastisement for thinking so bitterly would have to come later. A snap of a sonic boom erupts in the console room before a blue glow encapsulates the TARDIS. And she's there, surging into his existence through the flash of sapphire. She crashes to the ground as her body contorts against the metal floor.

When her frame stills, The Doctor transfixes on how her black dress wraps around her like a shroud. It's all he can do to maintain his composure.

Her breathing is shallow for a moment as he observes her, unsure of what to do. She claws through her tangled hair and unscrews her eyes. Peering up to the looming Timelord in front of her, her focus connects to his pained icy blues. Not knowing whether he was ready to cradle her or crush her, she offers him a meek smile.

"Oh damn." She presses an arm to a bruised shoulder and winces. "Wrong TARDIS."

Before the Doctor has a moment to respond properly, the Master makes a leap for the console and palms several levers into her hand. "Type 40 TARDISes are so feeble."

With a smirk, she pulls them toward her with full force.

"No!"

He manages to gasp before his breath escapes him completely. The TARDIS lurches under Missy's control and pulls him off of his feet. Stumbling violently with the changed trajectory, his head connects to the edge of the stairs with a loud crack.

* * *

><p>"Welcome back."<p>

A mocking voice sinks into his ears as he's greeted back into consciousness.

"Master." He manages to communicate in one word grunts of pain, but the way his hollowed eyes flood with anger spoke volumes.

He tries to pull his hands up to his face to nurse his aching head before realizing his colleague has left him in a restrictive imprisonment against the Captain's chair. Frayed wiring gutted from the TARDIS burn against his chest as the ropes of his captivity. Warm blood trickles down his brow, but he can do little to stop it falling onto his eyelashes and into his line of vision.

Missy turns her head toward the Timelord as she tries to waft smoke away from the damaged console.

"You really did a number on your time machine, Doctor." She pauses for a moment and yanks out more of the wiring from under the console. "Then again, so did I."

"W-why?" Communication proved difficult with the sharp twinges of pain interrupting his thoughts. He licks his lips and tries his question again. "Why did you lie?"

He knew the answer, of course, was to strip him of any hope. To leave him vulnerable. But he wanted to hear an answer fall from her mouth. After all, she was quick to betray the same friend she spent a lifetime building an army for.

"Lie about what?" She replies absentmindedly as she manipulates more levers on the console. "Oh, about the coordinates." She crosses her arms and takes a few swift steps toward the Doctor. "But I didn't!"

She feigns disappointment and drops her hands dramatically to her sides. "Doesn't even ask how I'm feeling after the mean ol' Brigadier tried to off me. Typical."

"You learned from past mistakes," The Doctor groans as he tries shifting the pressure of the constraints off of his chest. "Made sure your allies couldn't shoot you."

Missy nods in agreement, pleased with the Doctor's attentiveness. "I programmed the Cybermen to turn any targeted shots against me into a teleport beam. Just in case." She breaks into a sharp grin and points toward the Gallifreyan coordinates now returned to the screen.

"To those coordinates exactly. Gave them to you just in case your Justice League down on earth found a way to take hold of my TARDIS. Set to materialize in this bit of blank space if my cyber-boys attempted an assassination a la Mrs. Saxon."

The Doctor fidgets with an air of impatience and irritation. "You've failed to prove your honesty in this scheme, whatever it is."

"Oh alright," Missy rolls her eyes. "I did lie just a bit. Obviously those aren't the_current_ coordinates of Gallifrey."

Darkness dots the Doctor's vision, much to his growing frustration. His head hangs a little closer to his chest, but he maintains his icy stare toward the Master. "Why are you doing this?"

Rolling her eyes, Missy throws a thumb toward the console. "Took down your safe guards." Missy leans close to examine the Doctor's injuries and presses her fingertips toward the gash on his forehead. "Bit of a struggle, she put up a fight, but consider yourself the proud owner of a paradox machine. Again. I don't know the current coordinates, but we're going to find out."

"You're an idiot," The Doctor hisses through clenched teeth as pain spreads across his head. He gets the memo, understands her makeshift plan. His eyes flutter as he forces himself to stay conscious, much to Missy's enjoyment. "It'll never work."

Missy stays silent for a moment, soaking in his reaction.

"Oh. You really don't know, do you?" Dipping her hands into her pockets, she retrieves the Doctor's sonic screwdriver. "You poor, daft old man. Moping across the universe because you thought your precious home was still Timelocked."

"Even...even if that were true you'd put us right back into the Time War."

The Doctor's voice comes in a silent growl, more assertive than he's ever been with this incarnation of the Master. He tries to hide his stinging uncertainty. "This isn't the way."

"Of course it's the way. Forget about the laws of time for just one second, Doctor. Here's our chance to try for a pre-war Gallifrey, just you and I."

His eyebrows furrow as a wire-entangled hand tries to swipe at the screwdriver. "No."

She clicks the mechanism on the sonic and the Doctor watches weakly as his binds break apart and fall to the floor. The quick release of pressure against his chest causes him to slump forward, and Missy catches his face in her hands. She eyes the Doctor's pale features as her own face softens.

"No time for sleeping, Doctor. You know I need you for this."

She pulls his weight onto her shoulder and lifts him from the leather chair. Letting his feet drag underneath him, she all but shoves his unconscious form onto the telepathic circuitry grooved within the console.

"I doubt your TARDIS will let me play around, so you'll have to do."

Missy wraps her arms over his and eases his long fingers onto the circuits. She's careful in movement now, knowing full well this would be a nasty connection. With all safe guards erased from the TARDIS, the time machine would be hunting like a bloodhound for the destination that has long been forbidden.

"Think about those beautiful orange skies."

She's cooing into his ear as she lets the machine take him. Panicked eyes snap open, wildly looking for relief only to be blinded by the intrusion of his memories.

She grips the Doctor's shoulders and feels his muscles tense under the strain of the psychic link. "Imagine all those dull bureaucratic types littered around the citadel." Missy digs her fingernails into his shoulders as he arches his back in discomfort and tries to step away.

"Just try not to think of their bodies burning. You're right, I don't want to see the Time War again."

The Doctor's breath hitches as pain radiates between the connection. "Stop this," he cries as he's blinded by memories of silver and orange hues. The Academy. The barn on the outskirts of civilization. So many places he called home. He could think of something else to save him from what lies ahead. Anything to stop him reliving another Time War. But his deep-seeded longing to cling onto _any_ fragment of his planet brings Gallifreyan memories to the forefront of his mind.

The TARDIS screeches to a halt moments later, and the Doctor crumples to the floor when the connection releases him.

"I think that worked!" The Master beams with joy as she offers the Doctor a hand of support. He waves her off and leans over to catch his breath.

"We'll ruin everything," The Doctor says coldly before alarm bells consume the air.


	2. Chapter 2

_Unauthorized capsule entry prohibited_

The Doctor palms his ears and winces. "Timelords and their bloody alarms."

_Unauthorized capsule entry prohibited._

A red glow seeps through the TARDIS door, flickering to the beat of the obnoxious warnings. The Doctor lets his shoulders drop with an ounce of relief. It wasn't the red embers of fire and destruction that he became accustomed to his last few visits on his planet. Arrest he could deal with. Annoying bureaucratic types shuffling around Arcadia? He'd survive.

The Master places a hand on her chin and lets out an exasperated sigh. "Yeah," her voice trails off for a moment, and the Doctor watches as her eyes dance to the glow. "That and they knew we were coming. What's with the light show?"

The Doctor pulls himself up toward the console and focuses in on the monitor. He taps on the cracked glass. "You warned them? I don't see when –"

"No," Missy interjects as she hears footsteps in the intervals between the alarm warnings. "I tried to offer you a way out of this, remember that."

The Doctor stands up straight and adjusts his jacket, knowing the TARDIS would be receiving guests any second. "How's that then?"

"Should have took the Cybermen and left," she ignores the question in a sing-song voice. The Doctor swears he hears a twinge of nervousness in her intonation. She was never the one to break a sweat, especially over anyone of authority.

The TARDIS door splinters under the stress of someone trying to press through. The Doctor rolls his eyes and snaps his fingers, letting the onslaught of soldiers crash into the console room.

The Doctor raises his hands in surrender, towards the gun-totting Timelords now encircling the two. "Sorry for double parking my TARDIS. You know who I am, you probably know who she is, can we move this along?"

The Doctor winces at the sight of a half dozen guns trained on him, though the soldier's eyes focus on Missy. He admires the pristine condition of their regalia – a simple combat uniform created to defend themselves from Dalek attack. The lining dappled with Gallifreyan symbols of empty axioms of hope and integrity. Was the time war still raging on after all?

A burly Timelord squeezing an equally hefty weapon sidestepped to Missy.

"Well? We had a deal." Missy huffed, tapping her foot on the console floor. "I did what the High Council asked of me. I brought you your _savior_."

The colonel sucked in some air, as if breathing a sigh of relief. "I've been waiting to do this for a long time." He snaps the stock of his gun against her temple, sending her crashing to the floor.

Something cold forces itself upon his neck before the Doctor has a time to react.

"Whatever this is, that wasn't necessary." The Doctor growled. He turned around, the gun now trained to his chest. An older guard stood before the Timelord, the second-in-command, he presumed. He could tell the round of guards were the scraps of what militia was left from the Time War. What the citadel could cobble together from the survivors.

"You're not the one who necessitates our actions, no matter what you believe, Doctor."

The guard moved his index finger toward the trigger, but the husky one pushes his colleague's weapon away. He eyes the Doctor's contusions he picked up from Missy.

"We need him to survive the trip. He needs to see Gallifrey as he left it."


	3. Chapter 3

The sky is midnight blue.

The Doctor sucks in some air sharply, taking in the shock of color. The air circulates in his lungs like icy daggers – not the warm, humid airflow from a rust-tinted atmosphere. Not like his home.

The soldiers lead him out of the armory where the TARDIS materialized, wrists contorted behind his back. Missy's boots drag underneath her as the others lug her unconscious form behind him. The proper technology for rapid transportation still exists on Gallifrey, but the militia prefers to parade the pariahs around the empty landscape. Renegades, just like old times.

The Colonel's fingernails dig into the Doctor's hands each time they pass a place of notable ruin, as if he were anticipating the questions the Doctor must have on the current state of his surroundings.

As if the Doctor didn't have centuries to dream about the ash, blood, and debris that blankets his home.

"What time is it?" Is all he could offer his captor.

The man sniffs the air with indignation. "Around midday. Hard to tell these days."

Missy lulls her head to the side and groans, her eyes still screwed shut. "Doctor –"

He tries to turn his head in response, but receives a shove in return.

"What color is the sky?"

He keeps his eyes on the ground now.

_Blue is just a spectrum of light. A different scattering of particles. The rods and cones of our eyes absorbing different wavelengths. Keep it together, Doctor._

He finds it harder to breathe, and his inner panic focuses on the frost that encases each inhale. The elbow digging into his spine doesn't help, either.

"She asked you a question."

"It's blue, Missy." A tone of apology, a condolence to the copper sky that once was Gallifrey.

She draws out a long sigh from her lips and cracks her neck. "Right. Then I guess it's time for me to leave."

Missy twists the ring between her fingers, activating a row of spikes that she quickly stabs into the wrist of her captor.

The soldier drop like a stone and the colonel swings around, training his weapon to the Doctor's temple. His cohorts encircle Missy with their guns.

Missy pulls the pendant off of her lapel, a soft red glow emanating from it. She trains it between the Colonel's eyes. He motions his fellow soldiers to stand down.

"If it were any other day, I wouldn't care," Missy states with an air of indifference. She waves a hand toward the Doctor, who was now struggling under the Colonel's shaking grip.

"But if I'm stuck here, I'd rather you not dispose of my bargaining chip. You can't kill me if he's still drumming up a fuss."

"Oh it's been a rollercoaster of a time with you two!" The Doctor shouts as he moves his head uncomfortably away from the gun. "I am nobody's bargaining chip! Just tell me what the hell is going on so we can stop the melodrama, please."

"Christmas." Missy offers. "Why do you think the Timelords were so eager to escape the pocket universe through that stupid town in Trenzalore?"

"Because they're morons who want another time war, I'd wager."

"Look around you!" Missy shouts in disbelief. "Do I really have to spell it out for you? You used to be so clever."

The Doctor's eyes fixate once more to the blues of the sky, his breath like rising up like smoke in the air.

"I'm killing it," he says abruptly. He declares it to no one in particular, except maybe his conscience. "The atmosphere of the pocket universe..."

"Keeping Gallifrey out of the constellation of Kasterborous, guarding that bloody little town as Gallifrey rejects the environment of the pocket universe. You're sending it into an ice age."

"I was trying to save it!"

"And we were grateful for the moment's peace you've given us," a voice says, illuminating from a projection now reflected off a collapsed building. The High Council appear through waves of static, sitting behind the looming Timelord President. "But there's only so many times you can get away with the destroying your people before retribution must be considered."

"If you traveled back into the universe, the Time War would have restarted." The Doctor pauses for a moment and laughs coldly. "Do you think the Daleks ever stopped evolving when Gallifrey was out of the picture? Did you think your absence stopped them? Try and go to war with them now."

"Your mercy was a gamble," The President retorted, unaffected by the Doctor's words. "Either wipe us all out, or assume that we would land in a compatible pocket universe by mere chance? We have spent all remaining resources trying to move back to our Universe, leaving Gallifrey in ruins, only to get hindered by you once more."

"Why not let me die on Trenzalore then? Why give me the regenerations?"

The Timelord President types some buttons onto a command console. The Doctor feels the gravitational pull of a teleportation device begin to restrain him.

"That's a question for the Master. Something you might want to ask her before we rectify that decision."


End file.
